


The Crash

by Winstonian1



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winstonian1/pseuds/Winstonian1
Summary: On 28th February 1972, George Harrison and Pattie Boyd were en route to a party when George crashed the car. George was allowed home that night but Pattie was kept in under observation for concussion and several broken ribs. This story as about the immediate aftermath.
Relationships: Pattie Boyd/George Harrison
Kudos: 3





	The Crash

CRASH

ONE

George carefully lifted the ornate mirror from its place on Pattie’s dressing table, and carried it downstairs, held aloft in front of him, step by step, mind tuned to the possibility of disaster so as to avoid his falling on the stairs. He carried the mirror into the kitchen and placed it carefully on the big kitchen table. He then went into the scullery where he knew he’d find old newspapers that had been read by staff, friends, whoever, and he brought one into the kitchen and spread it out in front of the mirror. Next he moved across to one of the kitchen drawers, and drew out a large pair of scissors. He placed the scissors next to the mirror, pulled the nearest chair over to the mirror, and sat down.  
He looked into the mirror.  
The eyes that looked back at him showed no expression, no reaction. They were deadened in shock. Thus it was that the purple bruising already forming across his cheekbone, the dried blood encrusted in the long dark hair, and the lurid and swollen stitches tracing up the shaved strip on his scalp were viewed with deadened equanimity. George stared at the nightmare vision of himself. He looked into the pretty dressing table mirror, and saw himself, and also saw the sickening whirling view from his windscreen as he wrenched the steering wheel to try to avoid the lamppost and he heard the sound again, that incomprehensible sound of crunching metal and screaming tyres.  
He picked up the scissors. He chewed at his inner lip. He picked up a hank of deep brown hair in the other hand and opened the scissors and crunched them down on the hair, near the scalp. He dropped the length of hair onto the newspaper.  
There was still no expression in his eyes. He looked across the room at the telephone. They said he could ring at nine. He looked across the room at the clock. It was fifteen minutes to nine. He looked at himself again in the pretty mirror.  
She’d been unconscious, still unconscious, when he’d last seen her. She’d been unconscious since the crash. He hadn’t spoken to her. He grasped another hank of hair and cut it off.  
They were good sharp scissors. He’d seen her on the gurney. Blood on her head, eyes closed, pale. He looked at the clock. Thirteen minutes to nine. He looked at the hand holding the scissors. It was trembling, very slightly. He tightened his grip. They told him he had to go home. They were moving her, to a nursing home, he had to leave. They called a taxi for him. He couldn’t even sit with her while he waited for it. They sent him into a waiting area at the front of the hospital.  
He cut off another length of hair. He was working around the side they’d shaved off. He now had one long side and one very short side. He couldn’t even bother to find it amusing. He realised he’d need another mirror to help do the back. Maybe. His hand brushed against the stitches and it hurt. Then it carried on hurting. There were paracetamol in the bathroom. Upstairs. He wondered if he could be bothered to go up there. Maybe.  
He stared into the mirror. His eyes reflected – guilt.  
George put the scissors down, propped his elbows on the table and rested his forehead on the heels of his hands. She could have been killed. He couldn’t get past the thought. She could have been killed. So could he, but that seemed a bit irrelevant right now, since he was sitting in his kitchen with little more than a sore head and she was in hospital and her ribs were broken and they’d told him that concussion was serious, as if he didn’t know. And it wasn’t as if some crazy driver had hit him or knocked him off the road. He was the crazy driver. He always was. She’d told him. And he knew it. But the worst that had ever happened before was a few speeding tickets and a squashed shrubbery one night on the way back from the chip shop. He was the crazy and invincible driver. It’s okay, I always know what I’m doing.  
Yeah right.  
He looked at the clock. Twelve minutes to nine. Why was it going so slowly?  
Guilt.  
In one of the offices in Apple, one of the secretaries, on the long velvet sofa that Derek had found in some second hand shop in the East End and had brought in because he “couldn’t leave it in the shop”, which is what he always said when he bought yet another crazy oddity; but the sofa wasn’t crazy and had been very comfortable when George had laid that secretary the day before his birthday and the day before Pattie had given him the beautiful mosaic wall plaque and three days before he nearly killed her.  
The huge oak front door slammed shut. George’s head jerked up, pulling his stitches again, and he stared up at Terry Doran sauntering into the kitchen. Terry stopped dead. Halted by sight of his employer,the George Harrison, piles of bloodstained dark hair on the table, his head half shorn, his face white and his eyes…  
“George! What the fuck?? What… George, what’s happened?” He was on his knees in an instant next to the chair and one arm around George’s shoulders and his own eyes wide with shock. “George!!”  
“Car crash.”  
At that point Terry found himself looking around, looking in vain for the other person…  
“She’s in hospital.”  
Terry blinked rapidly as he tried to order his thoughts and his frantic questions. “How…”  
“Concussion. Broken ribs.” The two men looked at each other.  
“But she’s alright?”  
“I can phone at nine.” Both looked at the clock again.  
“George… what are you doing?” Terry pointed at the hair, the scissors, the mirror. George gestured weakly towards the stitched gash on his scalp.  
“They… they cut it. I’m… I’m doing the rest.”  
Terry’s eyes widened even more in near disbelief, and then he made one quick decision; an attempt to bring some kind of order to this almost apocalyptic scene. He pushed himself to his feet, and picked up the scissors. “Here. I’ll do it.” He moved himself to stand behind his friend, and grasped a handful of the elbow length hair. “Here,” he said again. “I’ll do it.” He went to work with the scissors. George sat, motionless, watching. A tear pooled in the corner of one eye and he blinked it away. Terry moved the scissors around the head, cutting away the rest of the long strands, trimming the parts that George had tried to do himself, evening it all up, and when he’d finished it looked - almost - properly done. George nodded faintly, turned away from the mirror to look up at his friend and nodded again.  
“Thanks.”  
“It’s okay.”  
It was nine o’clock.  
With a hand that was still slightly trembling, George fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the number they’d given him for the nursing home she’d been sent to. He swallowed hard and dialled. “Pattie Harrison,” he said to the voice at the other end. “They said I can call now to see how she is.”  
………………………  
TWO

“I think she’s awake.” The nurse could be said to have sounded brisk; George thought she’d snapped at him. She looked and sounded as if she disapproved of him. A part of him dismissed her as irrelevant. Another part of him felt so responsible that, perhaps, she was right to snap. “Room 25. You can’t stay long, she needs rest.”  
That was definitely a snap. Way beyond just brisk. He nodded curtly at her, and moved along the corridor she’d indicated, following the room numbers until he reached 25. He paused, lips pressed together, and then knocked quietly on the door. There was no reply. This time he chewed on his lower lip and then, as quietly as though he was trying to secretly break in, he turned the handle and opened the door.   
She was lying half turned away from him, very still, and he wondered if she was actually still asleep, but she must have heard the opening of the door because she slowly turned her head to look at him.  
And screamed. Her hands flew to cover her mouth and her blue eyes were wide in shock.   
The snappy nurse materialised so quickly that it looked as though she’d teleported. Or got there on her broomstick. “Mr Harrison, I’m sorry but you’re going to have to leave…”  
“No!!” Pattie’s voice cut in, and she was trying to push herself upright and reaching out towards him. “No,” she repeated, “it’s fine. I want him to stay…”  
“But…”  
“No.”   
The snappy nurse looked from one to the other, and clearly concluded, unwillingly, that she had to concede this one. With a parting glare at George she turned on her heel and marched back down the corridor, leaving George still standing by the door and almost as shocked as Pattie had sounded. He shifted forward just enough to allow the door to close behind him, and then stood, uncertain and absolutely devoid of any idea on how to proceed. Pattie held her hand out again.  
“I’m sorry – it was a shock.” She tried again to sit more upright, but again lay back against the pillows. George shook his head. “But… what have you done?? Why?”  
George tried to smile, and began to move slowly towards her across the room. “They shaved a bit of my head. For the stitches.” He reached the bed. “I cut the rest off.”  
She looked up at him. “It gave me a fright.”  
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, but he continued. “I’m sorry. Pattie – I’m sorry.” He lowered himself slowly onto the bedside chair, as though unsure of his right to sit there without invitation. “I’m so sorry.”  
“It’s alright. It was only a bit of a fright…”  
“No.” He interrupted her, his gaze fixed on her face as though he didn’t dare look away. “I mean… I‘m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And then she understood his meaning.  
“Oh.” They looked at each other and George didn’t think he could say anything until she had answered him. She looked down at the bedspread, smoothing out the sheet until it lay across her lap in pristine neatness. She rested her hands on it a moment, and then looked up at him again. “You’re a crazy driver.”  
“I know.”  
“I’ve always said so.”  
He nodded.  
“It was your fault.”  
“I know,” he said again. His hands were clasped so tightly together between his knees that they hurt.  
Silence fell again. She looked into his eyes again. “But you’re still you and that’s the way you are and I still love you.”  
His lips parted in a silent gasp; he unclasped his hands and, tentatively, reached one out towards her. She took it in both of her own. George looked down, and then up at her again. “You forgive me then?”  
She regarded him for a moment, unsmiling, then pursed her lips. “Except for one thing.”  
George found himself frozen in anxiety. “What?” was all he could manage.  
“I hate the hair.”  
George blurted out an involuntary snort of laughter, and raised his free hand to brush through the shorn locks. “You don’t think much of Terry as a barber then.”  
“Terry?”  
“He came in and found me trying to do it. He did a better job than I was.”  
“I dread to think what that was like then.”  
“I thought you might be dying.” And his voice caught, and she let go of his hand and held out her arms to him, and he slid forward to take her in his arms. She gave a yelp.  
“Careful! I can’t lean forward!”  
“Get yourself comfortable.” He waited whilst she carefully wriggled herself into a more pain-free position, and George pulled the chair closer to the bed and rested both his elbows on it and reached out to stroke her hair.  
“You’re shaking,” she fretted  
“I think it’s shock, from… you know.”  
“Oh god…”  
“What?”  
“How was it when you drove here?”  
“Terry drove me.”  
“Oh, that’s alright then.”  
George studied the hospital bed. “Is there room for me on there too?”  
“Of course. But be careful… I can’t…”  
“I know.” He pushed the chair back and, very cautiously, slid himself onto the bed next to her and slithered his arm under her neck.  
“George, you have to take your shoes off!”  
He blinked at her in surprise. “Why?”  
“It’s a hospital! You can’t put your shoes on hospital sheets!”  
“That’s crap.”  
“No it isn’t.”  
“You sound like my mum.”  
“Well?”  
He sighed. “But I’m comfy now. And so are you.”  
She snuggled closer to him. ”Ok. But don’t blame me if they tell you off.”  
“They will. That nurse hates me.”  
“At least she can’t call you a long haired layabout.”  
They both giggled, Pattie as carefully as he could so that it didn’t hurt, and she turned her head so that her forehead was touching his; they lay quietly together, absorbing their shared relief and letting stress dissipate as the moments ticked by in the sterile and alien room. For George, the remission from stress was so profound that his mind started to shut down. For Pattie, his physical closeness at last after all the fear and pain was having exactly the same effect. He leaned forward just as far as he could without affecting her position and kissed her on the lips. She smiled; both pairs of eyes drooped closed.  
They heard the brisk footsteps in the corridor outside but didn’t have time to react before a sharp knock at the door was followed by the door opening. “Mr Harrison!”  
“Oh god,” he muttered under his breath. He twisted his head as best he could to try and look round at her. “Yes?”  
“Mr Harrison, I did say she needs rest. You really must leave now.”  
“No!!”  
The shouted denial came from both of them in complete unison, and the nurse frowned in surprise. “But…”  
“I’m fine,” Pattie assured her, probably not very accurately by medical standards but as firmly as she could manage. She peered at the nurse over George’s shoulder and looked as stern as she could. “He can stay for a while,” she insisted.  
“I won’t be long,” George added, unconvincingly.  
Once again, the nurse had to concede defeat. “No more than half an hour and then you really will have to leave.” The door clicked angrily closed, and the two subsided again into each other’s closeness and love. Neither bothered to check the time for half an hour. He would leave when they were both ready and not before. He gave her another kiss, she smiled, and they dozed once more in each other’s arms on the uncomfortable but still clean hospital bed.


End file.
